Well that was an interesting romp.

Cleared the game in 1hr 26 minutes and that was with running around completely directionless for about 5-7 minutes. Anyways, also as you can see from the second screenshot only 9% completion from beating the first mission. I liked what i played. The controls are solid and more of a modern third person shooter than any of the previous games I'd liken the controls to a splinter cell game. Also, holy shit this game is going to be fucking intense. The entire last sequence is intense. I don't think Phantom Pain ends on a happy note at all.

That's pretty fast. I'm just getting it to hold me over until MGSV proper. So what does the mission variety seem like? Since you're only 9% done, does it seem like the other 91% is different enough to be of worth to replay?

Is the hardest difficulty available from the start?

9%, there is a lot to collect on replays.

Well basically the military base you see in all the trailers is the only area in the game. Its rather large area though. The other missions are selected from the main menu. They are basically different scenarios in the same area think like VR missions or something. There are also collectibles around like XOF patches. One of the other neat things is during missions where you have to extract a target you can call for a Helicopter you can choose the Heli's landing zone. Some landing zones can be shorter walking distance but higher risk to be shot down. So you take your chances. On the final extraction I had found a Rocket Launcher and proceeded to have the Heli land in a high risk area. I used the Rocket Launcher to then clear out the AA's shooting at the chopper allowing us to actually escape.

If you're the type of person who liked to try for different ranks in the old games you'll get some play time out of this thing. If you're coming for the story you'll get a brief bit but seems the main attraction here is to show off the game play mechanics and the Fox engine in motion. Also, Keifer does a pretty good job as Snake. I think I'm okay with him playing Big Boss.

@bigjeffrey: No, you'll unlock Hard mode after you complete the main mission once you beat the main mission once.

Which version did you play, the current gen (PS4 or XONE) or last-gen (PS3 or 360)? If it was last-gen, how did it look and play?

Though I would say that's unacceptable for Kojima to release this game at 30 bucks, but I won't judge until i play it.

You can't tell from the screenshots? PS4.

@demoskinos: How is kiefer sutherland as snake?

Edit, sorry!. Should have read the thread first :\

So, they're going to play through the entire game during the QL?

Yeah, PS4 and God Damn does it look beautiful. Should mention that the PS4 version is the only one that has a dynamic skybox. Meaning the clouds and sky actually move over time.

Here is the thing. There IS a good chunk of game here but its also for people who are very interested in getting good at the sneaking and mechanics of the game. Replaying for ranks and such and figuring out more efficient ways to do things is going to be the meat of this package. If you're going into this expecting to get tons of story then yeah you're going to be disappointed. If you just want to have fun playing the game and exploiting the new mechanics then you'll get your moneys worth out of it.

What's with his head in that second pic? It looks absolutely massive in comparison to his body.

He isn't called BIG boss for nothing son.

@liquidprince:

I only just noticed the screenshot icons. Now I feel like an idiot -_-".

He entered the big head code.

@demoskinos said:

Isn't that actually 62 minutes and 26 seconds? Or maybe you left your console on and it's 62 hours 26 minutes and 2.08 seconds?

Took me around 85 minutes to finish it. Controls felt solid, the slow-mo alert thingy is pretty cool and helpful. But I'm really jonesing for some Dave Hayter.

I agree. I don't feel like I was jipped or anything by the asking price versus the amount of content in the game, but if I were to voice (harr harr) any sort of complaint, it would be with Kiefer Sutherland's voice-work. It's fine, but it doesn't seem like quite the same character when Snake speaks in this game.

It may just be the fact that I haven't played anything Metal Gear since 4 but I thought the voice acting in general was kinda meh. Master Miller in particular.

I'm playing more of the side ops now and really enjoying those. I can see where the "open-world"-ness can come into play of phantom pain through this stuff.

Bad voice acting is almost a bit of a hallmark of Metal Gear games though! Raiden's Jack The Ripper voice is hilarious.

Well, this voice acting isn't bad enough. It's just a little stilted. Hopefully we have more cornball VO to look forward to.

Am I crazy for thinking this should be a downloadable game instead of a full disc thing?

Yeah, I'm actually glad I bought it digitally.

Shit you're right. I'm going to just go ahead and blame that it was 3am and I was tired as shit for mis reading that. >_>

But what about those cassette tapes and playing custom music on PS4?!